chapter two again
by mushookie
Summary: A story about a boy and his girl.


**Fret**.

...for DANIELLE.

**chapter two** . **a little less vendetta, a little more touch me** 

It was a lie that she would not open her eyes again.

She did open them, and she did not like what she saw.

She wished she hadn't woken up.

It seemed to be a canopy of some sort. A canopy, atop a huge bed that, thank the shadows, she was in alone.

She let out a long breath and blinked several times. What she saw did not change.

And of course, as any such ironically unwanted situation went, she had not forgotten what happened.

Her heart skipped several unhealthy beats.

In a sort of fervor, she covered her face with her arms. She turned to her side. She did not want or feel the need to cry; more so she wanted to rip her eyeballs out so she didn't have to look at anything, watch what was happening, take in the world around her, so she didn't have to deal with what madness this place scorned into her system.

How was anybody supposed to deal with what she was dealing with now? How could anyone adjust to such a change? Half the shit that had happened in one night made no sense at all, the other half just as if not more improbable, and that is to say improbable according to everything life is and does. Her tactic so far had done her no good. Her tactic from now on would do her no good either; sitting back and letting it happen was the last thing she wanted. She made a noise of disappointment for letting the thought even cross her mind.

Maybe she wouldn't think about it at all. Would that work?

She turned to the opposite side, and slowly opened her eyes.

More huge windows. Everywhere, lining the room. As tall as the ceiling. Outside, it was still snowing. Small moans from the wind slid across the frostbitten windows and soft flakes of white snow built on the sills. It was, at least, pretty. She had a great urge to gander the rest of the room, for some reason, knowing it would be more breath taking than she could ever imagine.

Sitting up, she immediately found her assumption to be correct.

It was huge. It was round. The very bed she resided on was elevated in the center back wall, surrounded by pillars and marble wrap around stairs. The ceiling was superfluously high, and as she crawled out from the velveteen covers and to the edge of the bed, she could see a fine chandelier hang from its depth. Despite most chandeliers adorning jewels being crystal, a see through white, these were opaque—and black. Perhaps obsidian. Her mouth hung open. Vaguely she thought whoever lived here was a gigantic dickless prick—who needed an obsidian chandelier? A gigantic dickless prick, that's who.

The double door, directly across the way, was elegant, between two pillars, and also, huge. Though the room had a dark feel to it, the walls, the floor, the bed, it all was white. White marble, and sidings were silver. A few things in the room countered as it's opposite; to the right was a great black wardrobe, covered with nothing but dust. There was another, smaller single door to her left. That was black, too.

Before even thinking, she slid off the bed and walked down the five steps to the chilly marble floor.

She had foolishly over looked her blind spots.

"Curious?"

And as if reality had flicked off a switch, she could hear the music ring in her ears.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

By one of the windows, in a black Victorian-looking chair, the man sat.

"It's rude to snoop," he said to her, simply.

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

He was lounging there, one leg carelessly thrown over the arm of the chair, as though he didn't have a care in

the world. Maybe he didn't. She watched him, silent as a body buried six feet under. He smiled. He readjusted himself in his seat, rested his chin on his hands and squinted to regard her. He titled his head to signal her attention to the door she had so eagerly pursued.

"It's a bathroom."

She said nothing. She did nothing. She could not speak, she could not think, she could not do. She could only wait.

He stood up, and stretched. Danielle held her breath—she finally noticed his lack of shirt, and how low his pants slipped around his hipbones as he lengthened his abdomen. Why did a part, small, somewhere in the back of her mind, find him attractive? He idly scratched the back of his head and started to walk towards her.

Because he was attractive.

"Don't run," he murmured. His voice was raspy. It was light, and boyish, but it fit him well, and it coaxed her silence.

But not for long.

"No," she whimpered, turning to bolt and escape, turning to run.

But he was there. In front of her, to stop her. To block her way.

Like he had appeared. Like magic.

"What...?"

"Don't run," he repeated again, with more sense of direction and order than request. "I've had enough of your games for now."

He was too close.

Far too close.

"Get away from me," she said, far meeker than she intended.

He didn't say anything at all as he took the last step to close their distance.

He reached for her.

He reached for her fast, but somehow it still looked like it was in slow motion. She didn't know what to do.

She still couldn't move. No matter how much she wanted to get away, she couldn't get her body to move, not even an inch to the left or right. She did not move even when his skin touched hers. A jolt of a feeling, perhaps fear, perhaps curiosity, perhaps excitement, shot through her arms, her chest, her legs. He caressed the side of her face, rubbed the back of his knuckles against her cheekbone. He traced his finger down her jaw line until he let his thumb run along her bottom lip. He stroked her mouth twice then held her chin up with his finger, to hold her gaze at his face.

At last his eyes grew dark with mockery—and something else Dani could not recognize.

"Did I steal your first kiss?"

Her eyes went wide. She had, unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—forgotten about that.

She closed her eyes and jerked away.

"Ah," he said, with a tone of laughter and a hint of accomplishment that made her sick to her stomach, "that's darling."

A moment passed before he moved again. He let go of her, and brushed passed her—certainly he was trying to get under her skin, by deliberately making contact—and slowly, he made his way back to the chair in the corner.

She would not look at him.

"You can run now."

Without a sound, she darted for the doors.

Damn the tears that slid along her cheeks.

 we've been had 

The music must have been a part of the house.

It never stopped, no matter how fast she ran or how loud she screamed.

Although, the music wasn't bad.

It went in and out of her mind, like the tick tock, tick tock of a clock. Which, she noticed, were of no great abundance here. She found a few, hanging on the walls, or fallen down and broken to pieces on the floor, but none so far had actually kept time, none had actually ticked, and one even had much too many hours—if she remembered correctly, twenty seven of them, to be exact.

She had tried escaping. She had tried it for a long time. At first, she had tried it in her lunacy, running and banging on locked doors, dashing through the rooms of the house. She even tried to open some windows, but nothing worked. Eventually she had tired herself out—passed out and slept for what seemed to be hours, but for all she knew it might have been only one. The light in the manor didn't seem to change much either, she could never tell what time of the day it was—she started to think maybe there was no time. Maybe it had frozen stiff.

Things weren't what they seemed, or what they should be.

She found other windows, and it was always snowing. Always dark, always cloudy. She never saw the sun.

She should have maybe been cold, yet there wasn't a single cold draft, not anywhere she went. The manor was actually quite comfortable; the perfect temperature.

But the place made her lonely.

Dark rooms with no lights and no windows frightened her.

Strange far off noises and unnecessary thoughts frightened her more.

Soon, she found the music soothing.

Sometimes, when she fought to hear it, she no longer could. It fell and crept away, and she would not hear it again for time she couldn't count.

And when it returned, she welcomed it.

It kept her mind off things, at least.

i'm going to send the snow your way

Days might have passed.

She didn't know.

Sometimes she would wake up without realizing she had fallen asleep. The dreams she had would have jolted her from slumber, but once she opened her eyes she could no longer remember them. Noises from the manor would wake her, as well, but once she opened her eyes she could no longer hear them.

Sometimes she would just wake up.

And she would think. Sit and think and think, and think.

Half of the time she had nothing to think about. She would watch little sparkles float around above her head without really seeing them, she would sit across from a window, wonder how it was casting that dark shadow, what with nothing but those clouds and that snow producing any light she might have seen.

When she did have something to think about, they were silly things she shouldn't have been thinking about. Silly things like how her shoelace wasn't tied and she should probably tie it, but she really didn't care all that much so she would just stare at it as she walked, as she sat, and think about how she didn't care that it wasn't tied but she was still thinking about how she didn't care it wasn't tied. She would think about how she shouldn't be thinking about her shoelaces, because her life had just been basically ruined.

She would think about him.

did i steal your first kiss?

Her stomach churned.

She really, really, really did not want to think about him.

She resolved not to.

Yet, one knows that if you resolve not to think about a thing, it is the very thing you have sworn not to think of that is the first thing to cross your mind, and continues to be the most common thing your mind returns to.

The man is what she thought of.

She wished she knew his name.

She wished she knew why she was there, and why he was there, too.

He must have lived there.

She wished she could go home.

do you know what you wish?

But she hadn't seen him again.

She hoped she wouldn't.

that's darling

Yet, a part of her knew she had to find him—he was her only ticket out of this place.

But she really, really, really didn't want to find him. He had humiliated her, he had made fun of her, he had laughed at her, he had made her cry.

He had kissed her.

He had kissed her.

He had kissed her.

What was she going to do?

are you sure what you wish is what you want?

The manor was huge.

She was looking for some sort of entrance hall, though, she supposed. Old grand manors such as these always had an entrance hall.

And all entrance halls had exits.

She walked down the dimly lit hall with a small kink in her step. Hazily, she wondered why she bothered. She knew in her right mind there would be no possibility the manor had a way out, especially with the man keeping her there, and letting her run off into the distance without supervision. If it did have an entrance hall, she could be certain she wouldn't find it. Or she could be certain she couldn't get to it, or open the likely gigantic door that stood in the way of her freedom.

But her heart didn't want to believe it.

Even if she did find a way out, where the hell would she go? She had no idea where she was. She had no idea how far she had been taken. She had no means of getting back home, for she didn't know how she got there in the first place.

right?

Would she give up?

no

She wouldn't give up.

She wasn't the type.

She couldn't give up.

right

She rubbed her eyes.

She was not crying.

Not here. Not now.

Not for him.

 don't wish, don't start 

He walked to the wardrobe on the other side of the room, tugged the little skeleton key from the top of it, and opened the lock.

If he was going to try and talk to the girl, he was going to have to look snazzy.

The truth was that he felt quite bad for teasing her. He was certain that she was crying when she left, and that was not his intention, nor what he wanted, not at all. He was going to make it up to her, and he was going to say he was sorry.

Or he was going to try.

He rummaged through his closet—the jackets, the long shirts, the pants that hung there. He wasn't really good at this sort of thing, at least, he thought so, because he wasn't sure what colors went well with each other. Though his array hadn't had every color of the rainbow, he was sure he could still manage to look ridiculous.

He didn't want her to think he was a big dork, or something.

He closed the door of the wardrobe, and smoothed out the front of his black jacket buttoned it nearly all the way up and grabbed the studded belt off the floor. He hoped that black with black would work well enough, because that was what he chose, and he wasn't going to try again.

On the way out of his door he fiddled with the tips of his hair a bit—it'd be a lie if he said he wasn't a little nervous.

 no one mourns the wicked 

She took a small, strained step backward.

The snow stayed calm beyond the glass, flurry, there on the sills, and falling through the air.

Her breath came faster and faster.

go

She closed her eyes, and threw it—with all of her body weight, pulled back, flung it violently over her head, through the air—crinkled her nose as it shattered through the glass.

Fractured and cracked, like a million little glaciers breaking away into the sea.

It sounded like a scream. She covered her ears as the glass blew apart to smithereens; the noise was so loud and high pitched, unearthly, it was almost painful.

She had just flung a statue—not the lightest she could find—at one of those tall, thin windows, evenly spaced all down and along most of the faint halls.

And instantaneously, the music had stopped.

if you know what you want…

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Something wasn't right.

She opened her eyes, and with the weight of the statue free, ran the small distance to the sill, and leaned over the edge.

Her eyes had never been wider in her life.

defying gravity

Whatever force she had just used, whatever wit she had just found, it all vanished in a split second—a horrid, long, dire split second that had no business in a timeless world.

Each window piece, broken again and again, cracked through and through, had frozen.

Stopped. Held in place.

Falling around the statue, which was just as unmoving and idle as those sparkling glaciers.

Snow fell and clung to the crooks of glass and stone.

Dani swallowed whatever lump of bodily gunk had lodged itself in her throat, because she couldn't breathe through it. She was in shock. Tentatively, she inched her finger to the closest, and gripped it out of the air. She brought it beneath her eye and inspected it in the refracted light and white of the flurries, but saw nothing.

Just a broken piece of glass.

Her finger began to bleed, and she dropped the piece. It made a small ting on the cold, damp stone floor, and she looked back up, fighting the urge to scream.

She couldn't scream.

She couldn't cry.

She couldn't lose…

And one by one, the shards began to shake.

She couldn't lose…

One by one, they pulled to each other.

One by one, the small cracks in each splinter were put right.

One by one, they flew to the sill.

Fast.

A sharp piece sliced into her hand at the edge, and she jumped back.

Jumped back at the precise time before every single piece, every single sliver of glass, every single one—rocketed to the exact place they first started out.

The statue smashed backwards into those pieces, through them, as they mended again, and again, and found its original place.

The window went backwards, reverse, rewound—the window had mended itself—and there it was.

She backed away to the opposite wall of the hall, and stood in front of that grand, glass window.

That grand, glass, unscathed window.

She bit her bottom lip.

She wouldn't lose.

With her palm bleeding and throbbing, she clenched her fingers into a fist, ran to a smaller statue, picked it up in her arms, and tripped over it to the next window before she whipped it through the glass.

It broke.

And then reversed in a matter of milliseconds back to a fully blown, intact, closed window.

Again and again, faster and faster, all the way down the hall.

Each window broke and shrieked; each shard shook and flew back to place. The statues hit her knees as she ran, and there would be bruises there later. The slices of glass cut her face as they raced to the sill and back, but she didn't care.

She ran and ran.

The windows wailed, shattered.

And the music never returned.

then make a wish.

Danielle fell to her knees, and screamed.

 melt away 

Not far away, on a bridge that didn't seem to end, a man stopped dead in his tracks.

"Oh, boy."

 just look at me 

Her wounds ached, and bled.

Every step she took felt sore, so she had stopped walking.

The music had not returned, but she hardly noticed this anyway.

She was in the library, now; at least this she knew.

It was huge, too, of course. And pure white—she opened the door and had recoiled from the brightness of the place. It wasn't as bright as, say, a sunlit room, but it was certainly brighter than her past environments. The walls themselves were the shelves, covered in all sorts of old, mildew ridden, bound and faded books, and she wished she was high-spirited enough to look through them. She would have enjoyed that. The floor hadn't a trace of dust, most things here did not—for how can dust collect in a timeless dimension?—rather, it was smooth, and cool, and nearly mirror-like, for she could see her outline when she looked down at it.

Though right now, she was just looking at the ceiling.

And unlike that room she had awoken in, before, there was no chandelier—just a great domed hollow, with a painting of a beautiful night sky that seemed to twinkle as she stared.

She coughed.

This room had grand windows as well, though these were larger than the ones in the hall. These were more like the size of the ones near the bridge, and had intricate, complex frames that swirled and pointed into stars and what looked to be hearts. Magnificent twisting stair cases twirled along the sides of the wall, up and around a huge fire place that looked as though it had been dormant for centuries.

She had to admit, it was very beautiful.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen; at least concerning libraries.

But she hadn't gotten to enjoy it for long.

She sat there and stared, nearly unblinking, at that twinkling painting above her. The stars of that night sky blinked and winked at her, as if they were almost laughing at her, or maybe singing for her—she didn't know which.

A low hum floated into her ears, but she did not realize it.

The night sky got brighter.

The stars got larger.

They looked to be coming off the painting, down from the ceiling. Like slow, tiny comets, swirling, falling iridescent embers down and down and down, and she watched them with a dim smile on her face.

They floated upon the floor in the middle of the huge, lofty room, and grew.

There was one, two, four—six—

Seven.

not tonight

A loud, irritant clang, like a symbol dropped to the floor, cracked. The noise made her flinch, snap, close her eyes for just that split second—that same horrid, long, dire split second that still had no business in her timeless world, and when she opened them, she immediately wished she hadn't.

head back to sleep, now

Silver, white, grey things—tall, pointy, jerky, horrible creatures—there, dancing, creaking, snapping, clanging.

Coming towards her.

"No…" she whimpered, with what strength she could muster.

The creatures flickered, like the static of a television. Flickered off, flickered on.

Flickered off.

Flickered on, a foot away from her.

"NO!" Dani squealed.

She scrambled to regain her composure, hissed as her bruises rubbed along the floor, each other. She backed away like a crab, slightly dragging her left leg, which the one creature closest to her, which also happened to be the only one whose mask was unzipped, whose black empty face could be seen, stretched and screeched to scrape at her, grab at her ankle with clawless limbs.

She screamed again.

It pulled at her, hard. So hard she lost her balance and flipped to land on the ground brutally on her side, so brutally she bit the inside of her lip and it broke open, the blood spilled over her tongue—and yanked her backward, towards it, so viciously her knee should have popped out of socket.

She screamed and screamed, and it yanked again.

The copper warm taste of blood floated on her tongue.

Suddenly, she slammed her hands on the ground for leverage, and whipped her head around.

With an adrenaline rush that came from nowhere, but to her great gratitude, she pulled her limp bruised leg that wasn't being whipped around by a fingerless freak upward and around, and kicked the creature, over and over, as ferociously as she could manage, until it screeched and let go.

Immediately she stood and ran to the wall, ignored the needle pang of discomfort on her hip, and her face, and in both of her legs, and grabbed a handful of books from the shelf.

If she had to, she would give them paper cuts.

"C'mon," she spat.

This time, they watched her, and flickered off.

Flickered on.

An inch away from her, cornered against those books and those shelves.

She moved to defend herself—or tried—but she couldn't.

Was she too afraid?

They towered over her. They did not breathe. They did not twitch, they did not sway.

Were they toying with her?

No.

The same one before. With that face. That sharp, black, empty, sunken face. It lifted its arm and squirmed in front of her, waiting to strike her, waiting to hurt her, waiting to kill her.

They were toying with her.

She dropped the books in her hand.

She lowered her head.

Suddenly, that will and that adrenaline, that determination, to win, to fight back, to find her way around the obstacles she had been given, had vanished.

And she waited for that blow.

don't be silly

It never came.

 like a handprint on my heart 

She pulled her arm out of his grasp, yanked it, and hopped away from him.

"Don't touch me," she hissed, with venom she could taste in her mouth, though that might have been the blood. She twisted her body around to give him a terrible glare, because that was the only thing she could do with what strength she had.

He simply closed his ridiculous double doors behind him and turned to look at her with a little smile on his face. "Come now," he said, soothingly, which she didn't like, "is that anyway to treat me?"

She crossed her arms over her chest. Her whole body ached.

He put his hands behind his back and leaned against the doors. "…Now that I've saved your life?"

She huffed, against her own will. "I had it under control."

He huffed, too. "Ch'yeah. I bet."

Her face contorted in an incredulous frown. Who was this guy? What a prick! She made a loud noise of irritation. "You know what? Shut the hell up!" She snapped, "who the hell are you, anyway? What the fuck just happened?" She ran her hand through her matted hair at a failed attempt to keep calm. "What were those things…?"

He pushed himself off the doors with his hands behind his back. "You shouldn't have opened the windows."

"I—'' she started, but immediately stopped.

How did he know about that?

"They get in when you open the windows."

"They?" She blinked. "You mean those fuckin' things?"

He was walking towards her. "Yes. They get in when you open the windows." He locked eyes with her, and she swallowed something in her throat. Those eyes were so blue—so, so blue—they were almost green. They were shocking. They held her still as he advanced.

He was a foot away from her when she could finally begin to back away.

"You shouldn't open the windows," he repeated again, still taking those steps; dainty steps, that suited his lithe frame. He pointed idly at his noggin. "Got it memorized?"

"Get away from me…" she said, quietly.

The wall was advancing behind her as he advanced in front. And though she didn't want to, she was forced to gaze into those eyes, into that handsome face.

But she noticed something she hadn't before.

Tattoos—marks—there, under his blazing eyes. And like those eyes, the marks were blue—contrasted shockingly against that pale tone of his skin.

Tears.

She caught her breath as the cool marble wall stopped her, thumped against her back, abruptly halted her.

Without a word, the man walked closer, closer.

So close.

She didn't know what she was doing still standing there.

Too close.

She didn't know why she couldn't look away.

Closer than ever.

His nose tickled hers. His legs encircled her own, on either side, his arms stretched to hold himself steady, on either side, and she squirmed helplessly as she felt his hips press against her own.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"Shut up."

Without another word, and certainly without permission, he closed that small, pathetic excuse for what you may call space that was yet between them, and kissed her.

Kissed her.

He kissed her.

And she did not close her eyes.

She squirmed, she arched against him in attempt to get away, get him off, or at least discourage him, but he was incorrigible. He pushed back at her only harder, forcing his knee between her legs and separating them, holding her hands at the wall on either side of her head, and he kissed her deeper—the back of her head fell back and landed against the marble and she flinched, and the man took advantage of this and slipped his warm pink tongue between her lips.

The throb from hitting her head and the shock from his tongue in her mouth made her involuntarily arch at his hips, against them, and she felt something there that made the pit of her stomach bounce twice in place. It must have felt good for him, at least; he let go of one of her hands and instead took hold of her hip, gripping tightly as he pressed back at her, which made her lose what rational thought she had at that point, if only for a second.

Only a second.

With her free hand she tried swatting at him. She failed, and ended up just gripping at his shoulder and

pulling feebly there. He was moving his hand up her shirt, along her skin, inching along each rib. When his fingers cupped over the rise of her breast, fumbled there and stroked there, she dug her nails into his shoulder and whimpered at his mouth, bit at his lip, but it still did not deter him. He simply pushed back harder at every futile retort she attempted. Gripped her wrist tighter, arched his hips fiercer.

And just as she felt a little accustomed to his tongue, his mouth, on her, he pulled away.

Said nothing.

Just held her there, held her still, and looked at the flustered, violated expression she wore.

Before she could say anything, do anything, he dipped his head at her neck and slid his warm lips against the skin there. He opened his mouth and kissed her, again, again, licked, nibbled. She bit her lip and held back the noise she wanted to make, the noise she couldn't help but make. He ran his callused thumb over her nipple and her breath hitched in her throat—partly because this man was abusing her, partly because no one had ever done that before, and partly because it had felt nice when she hadn't wanted it to.

She closed her eyes.

When he finally let go of her other hand, she made no move to stop him.

Sucking now, at her neck, making the blood under her skin rise to the surface, he again used his knee and wedged her leg open, and fervently shoved his hand down her pants.

And then there was only the sound of her bit back gasps, the rustle of their clothes as they rubbed along and against each other, and when he was done with her, and she slid down the wall to a puddle of mush and heat on the floor, he kneeled there with her, until she opened her eyes.

She let out a very, very long breath, and looked at him with cynical eyes.

"You don't even know my name."

He smiled. "You don't know mine, either."

Sitting back and letting it happen was precisely her tactic, then.

 i need more affection than you know


End file.
